


hell is murky

by clockworkcorvids



Category: Original Work
Genre: Blood, Descent into Madness, Gen, Horror, Insanity, Mild Gore, Museums, No Dialogue, Psychological Horror, References to Macbeth, a vague sense of unease, art gallery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:00:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23080564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clockworkcorvids/pseuds/clockworkcorvids
Summary: The stain appears on the floor one day: blood on marble, a dragged smudge. It’s not fresh the first time it’s spotted, or at least the first time it’s spotted and anyone brings this observation out of their personal mindscape and into the collective of the art gallery curators’ sensory organs.LADY MACBETHOut, damned spot! Out, I say!—One, two. Why, then, ’tis time to do ’t. Hell is murky!—Fie, my lord, fie! A soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him.-Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 2
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	hell is murky

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! welcome back to kieran's inconsistency train! choo choo, motherfuckers, i can't choose a single fandom to write in and i can't be bothered to do anything about it except make things even worse by posting my original work too
> 
> please r/roastme i crave constructive criticism ~~im sensitive tho lbr~~

The stain appears on the floor one day: blood on marble, a dragged smudge. It’s not fresh the first time it’s spotted, or at least the first time it’s spotted and anyone brings this observation out of their personal mindscape and into the collective of the art gallery curators’ sensory organs.

It gets drier over the course of the first day, or maybe that’s just a trick of the light pouring in through the skylight overhead. The building is always full of light, though the pieces in the gallery are arranged carefully so as not to dull any ink or crack any paint with prolonged exposure to the sun’s searing, screaming gaze.

By dusk, the rose-red is now more of a wine color, or maybe it’s the other way around. Both roses and wine come in all variety of shades. In layman’s terms, the stain gets darker—there’s no more red carpet, only the same color used in a nearby ink print that graces one side of a marble pillar, black and white accented with bloody red. The gallery is not open that day, so the stain is not an instantaneous problem. No, it’s a problem for tomorrow.

The gallery does not have a janitor, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Custodial services consist of the cliche yellow pushcart, mops and sponges mixed with feather dusters and a box of finer tools—used to keep the art itself in shape. A curator mans the cart every afternoon, when the only light coming in from outside is on one side of the building, and at a strange disjointed angle. 

Work done at dusk is work done in anticipation of the oncoming day, so the curator with the pushcart kneels and examines the stain. Every chemical in the cart is tested on the stain, first dabbed on the edges of the stain and then all but splashed across it. 

It is as if the stain is part of the floor - looking at it from any angle, it has the dimensionality it should, but every external substance simply slides over it. Oil on water. The marble tiles surrounding the stain have been thoroughly cleansed of dirt and grime and all manner of bacteria, though, and should they come in contact with anything flammable, the residue of that cocktail of chemicals will no doubt light up in a sickening, flashing, momentary blaze.

(Perhaps, the curator thinks, the fire would wipe the stain away. The curator does not act on this thought.)

Slanted white light is beginning to turn yellow, hazy, dim; shadows lengthen, beams of light thin. The stain is more saturated, more defined in this light, sharp in color and nauseating in its entirety. It has not changed at all, except maybe in the way it is perceived, after the curator wipes away most of the cleaning agents and calls it a night.

* * *

The sunrise is bright, vibrant, colorful, and bloody. There’s some old proverb about a red sky in the morning, but in the meantime, the red is welcomed with (hesitantly) open arms. When it goes away, as the sunlight whitens and the sky clears, that’s when customers and tourists and artists and others will begin to flow through the gallery, infinitesimal droplets of water bouncing every which way off the marble. 

Someone swears the stain is smaller than before, just a bit more faded, can’t you see it in the corners?

(It’s not a rectangle, it doesn’t have corners! It’s a smudge, not so easily defined in shape.)

Today, a curator is not here, the one whose hands instinctively curl to fit the shape of the yellow pushcart’s handles. The hastily recorded voicemail, punctuated with static and heavily interfering background noise, says something about feeling sick, lightheaded; maybe having inhaled something.

The gallery opens at nine o’clock.

At eight o’clock, someone goes digging around in one of the old musty closets for a certain prop. The curators put up a little chain around the stain, neatly boxing it in, and a sign handwritten by the most meticulous and neat curator proclaiming what the artwork is: _“Stain”, Anonymous, 2020. Not available for purchase._

Capitalizing off of the stain is considered, briefly, but none of the curators are sure how it would be removed from the gallery, at least not without disrupting the floor, and that would simply be too much work. Fending off questions about the strange new piece is anticipated in a poor light, but it’s better than letting such a damned _annoyance_ besmirch the unmarked, glossy, cleaned-nightly floor. _Yes_ the floor is scratched in too many places to count, and _yes_ not everyone is considerate enough to wipe their footwear on the welcome mat before entering the gallery, and _yes_ the mat can’t catch everything, but such flaws are typically one of two things: insignificant or temporary.

The stain is neither of these things. Poised in an area of moderate foot traffic, where natural light shines into the gallery brightly and for a long stretch of time every day, it is nigh impossible to miss. Evidently, the stain is also very much _not_ temporary.

Perhaps caution tape, or at least one of those velvet line dividers from movie theaters (one of those would have matched it somewhat in color, too) would have been better suited to the stain, because a number of not-quite-customers passing through the gallery make a point of avoiding the chained-in square of marble tile upon which the stain has made itself at home. Many seem to take an interest in this odd new piece, only to wrinkle their noses in disdain after coming closer—maybe at realizing what it appears to be, maybe upon seeing _Anonymous_ , maybe upon seeing _2020_ , maybe upon seeing _Not available for purchase._ Any combination thereof would also likely prove sufficient.

The stain garners many reactions. Multiple people express concern, confusion, amusement, and all manner of other emotions that would not be expected to appear simultaneously. Many people seem silently perturbed. A few venture up to the nearest curator and, glassy-eyed, comment on how _fascinating_ it is that modern art is being taken to such strange new lengths. One enterprising soul cracks a joke about how the curators chose a creative way to cover up their most recent murder. Everyone in the building, in this moment, flares their nostrils and blinks in rapid succession, tasting the nauseating, fetid, _infected_ bite of a conglomeration of bleach, vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, and more.

The curator who had missed work today returns the treasured marble floor of the gallery to its usual pristine state as the sun begins to sink over the distant horizon. It is unseen from inside this building, the passing of time only trackable through the twisting, turning manipulation of sunlight coming in through the windows. Glinting brightly off the reddish-black rust, the diluted solar radiation almost creates the illusion of a quick fire, flashing over the stain in an instant.

The curator takes to the stain with sharp fingernails, tearing and scraping at it, determined to rationalize the irrational, compartmentalize the singular, budge the immovable. 

Keratin breaks—the stain remains unchanged.

Tearing turns to punching. Flesh bruises. Bones ache—the stain remains unchanged.

Blood spills. 

The stain soaks it up, and grows, and glistens in the dying light.

* * *

On the third morning, the chain is removed from around the stain. It is most certainly larger, and brighter in the center, darker around the edges—fresher. 

The curators decide to let the stain be. Perhaps a day of wandering feet will smudge it sufficiently.

The curator with the pushcart does not come to work that day, or the next, or the day after. The others lose track of how many days have passed since the stain appeared, but it remains the same, just a little inflated by its first and only sacrifice.

The floor is a marble altar. The stain is its deity. But a deity without sacrifices cannot remain in power. 

There is no more blood spilt, only dirt and footsteps. The stain does not become another work of art in the gallery. No, it remains, and it remains a nuisance, but nothing more.

One night, the sky is red. No curators are in the gallery. Nobody has cleaned the floor, because the gallery is closed for the holiday, and the curators are tired, and they plan to come tomorrow.

Motes of dust float in the air, dancing, illuminated by the setting sun. The scratches on the floor gleam in the light, and dirt makes the marble dull in some places. The tiles are rendered crimson by the sunset, the stain indistinguishable from the rest of the floor save for by its darkness.

The light slowly melds into darkness.

The next morning, the sun is hazy, dimmed by clouds and fog. The floor is scratched and dirtied, but it’s nothing that a mop can’t fix. 

The stain is gone.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! if you know me for any of my fanworks, thanks for giving my original work a try, i appreciate it a lot :)
> 
> my art can be found [here](https://pillowfort.social/clockworkcorvids)


End file.
